The Weekly Meat

Kentucky Derby 134

Anything can happen at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday of May, and anyone who tells you they know what will happen this Saturday in particular is off their rocker.

There's not a ton of speed in this year's race, with only seven horses ever running Beyer speed figures of 100 or better, and only three of those (Pyro, Gayego, and Big Brown) able to do so more than once.

Yesterday morning, I'd have considered those three horses as the contenders, with Big Brown as the early betting favorite, but the post positions have been announced, and this year, they wreck this thing for the handicappers.

Uh.... So, off my rocker or not, here's what's gonna happen:

BIG BROWN will break from the far outside of the auxiliary gate, and will have a lot of ground to make up to get himself into the good early positioning he seems to like. With nearly all of the early speed in the race breaking from far outside posts, I can't see this thing being won by anyone at the front of the pack early on, unless BB is indeed the second coming of Secretariat that his trainer claims him to be.

BB is a fascinating puzzle, in that he's very lightly raced, but has very real speed, and has won all three of his starts. Will he win? I highly doubt it. He'd turn out to be an incredibly exciting horse to watch if he did, but he'd be overcoming his inexperience and his post position to do so.

I might have liked GAYEGO, but not from the 19 post, sandwiched between BB and RECAPTURETHEGLORY, who has early speed to burn.

PYRO will be the darling of a lot of folks willing to toss out his last race, as he'd been rocking steady until then. But I can't ignore his slow workouts. It could all be an aberration, and he has both the speed and the running style to win it, I just don't think he will.

Two horses I do like:

As a longshot, EIGHT BELLES is a filly with good pedigree and decent speed. She's won her last four starts, and has turned in some lickety-split workouts recently. To win this thing, she'll have to be one tough chick, running with the boys for the first time, overcoming a much bigger crowd than she's ever seen, and running late. I'd love to see her do it. Is that just me wanting to give a girl a chance? Maybe. But at high odds, she's worth a bet to be in the money.

COLONEL JOHN is a solid horse on paper, is breaking from a good middle post, and will surely see his odds drop even lower by post time. He's coming off a couple of wins, has never finished worse than second in six starts, and has very impressive recent workout numbers. If I've got to pick one horse to win it, he's my nag.

There it is, people. Be sure to make your simple syrup early enough to chill it before mixing a tasty Mint Julep. And if your feeling particularly thirsty gluttonous patriotic, accept this as a challenge.

*The Daily Racing Form, America's Turf Authority since 1894, neither endorses nor is affiliated in any way with the views and ramblings of BK, America's Dirt Authority Since 1968.

The First Saturday in May

I picked my first Kentucky Derby winner in 1986. His name was Ferdinand, and old Bill Shoemaker guided him to one of the most perfect rides I've ever seen. The colt was an 18-1 shot, and I picked him out of sheer luck.

It wasn't until a few years later that I cracked the pages of "America's Turf Authority Since 1894" and actually attempted to handicap a race — an intricate science that requires endless time, analysis, snake oil, and bourbon. I was heading into my senior year of college, and I had the constitution for those sorts of things then. I lived that summer only a mile or two from the grande dame of race tracks, and so I studied the dense, coded charts of the Daily Racing Form, trying to make sense of them.

I did just that the night of August 13, 1989, knowing I'd be at the track to catch the first few races before work the next day. I picked a horse I liked in each of the first two races. I hadn't gotten to the third race, but as it turned out, I didn't need to.

I'm not into exotic wagers, but Saratoga had an early double, and I bet it. My horse in the first went off at 7-2, and won, beating the favorite by a half length, and I had the front end of my double, as well as $5 win and show tickets to cash. My pick — for reasons that completely elude me now, looking over the folded, yellowed pages of that day's Form — in the second race was named Cavanagh's Beau, and was ridden by Karen Rogers. He went off as nearly a 28-1 longshot, dead last by far in the betting pool. What happened next is the things Hollywood dreams are made of.

In a photo finish — while I stood sweating and hooting at the rail — my nag won the race by a nose hair, and I walked away from the pari-mutuel window with $1,200 in my pocket.

I've never had the stomach for gambling much. I bet no more than I'm willing to lose, and I walk when I'm ahead. If that means never winning a life-changing amount, so be it. I'm not the guy to parlay $1,200 into $20,000. I had placed $22 worth of bets on two horses, I'd gotten lucky, and they paid off well.

I was alone that day — no one to even buy a drink for — so I ran (literally, ran) from the track back to my car, and drove directly home. I had a couple hundred bucks already in my apartment from bartending tips and being paid the night before, and so I sorted my cash, rolled it into a fat pimp wad, put a rubberband around it, and drove it all down to the bank.

Then I went to work, as I did every other night that summer. Maybe smiling a bit more than usual and bragging on my double.

I have since had decent days at the track (and once or twice at casinos), but more often than not I lose what I consider to be a fee for the privilege of simply watching thoroughbreds run all out.

I can watch just about any race any time and enjoy it. But the Derby is special. Sure, it's a bloated, booze-soaked affair, steeped in southern aristocracy; the race itself, a crowded fire-drill. But in its way, it signals the start of springtime, and more importantly, it begins a new quest for the Triple Crown — one of the most difficult accomplishments in all of sport (there have been only 11 winners in history, and none since Affirmed in 1978). So with each year's quest, comes the tantalizing prospect that we may once again witness greatness. And so each year, without fail, I watch.

Because — though I'm not susceptible to the wiles of gambling — perfection is a drug I cannot pass up. I'll argue forever that Secretariat was hands-down the greatest athlete of the 20th century. He combined the athletic grace of Walter Payton with the confident swagger of Michael Jordan with Wayne Gretzky's omniscient economy of motion. Watching him win his Triple Crown races is quite simply the single most perfect thing I have ever seen. And in a small way, I live every day for even the possibility of seeing similar.

That said, I don't know that this is the year. Right now, all I know (just like every Phillies or Cubs fan) is that it could be, and so I watch. And I have become fairly good at handicapping the Derby. So come on back next week for this year's predictions. And turn on NBC by 6:00 pm EDT on Saturday, May 3 to watch 20 horses do what they were born to do.

Just This

Congratulations to the 2007 World Champion Red Sox! For those who beat the "Rocks," we salute you!

Mumm's the Word

Boston is once again in the World Series — against the Colorado Rockies. It’s a beautiful thing, yes. But these clubhouse champagne celebrations have gotten out of hand. At what point did they become as de rigeur as the now-clichéd Gatorade dousings in the NFL? Major League Baseball seems to have hopped in bed with Mumm, because the bubbly is not just for World Series victors anymore.

Now you’ve got your “We Made the Playoffs!” celebration, your “We Won the Division Series!” celebration, and your “We Won the League Championship Series!” celebration as well — which begs the question: doesn’t that cheapen an actual World Series celebration? I sure think the champagne would taste much sweeter if I drank it only once (not that these guys even drink the stuff anymore — it sure looks more like swim-goggled public bathing than anything else).

Yes, I know, we Red Sox fans doth protest too much. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather the Sox have something to celebrate than just get dejectedly hammered down at the Cask ’n Flagon before leaving for an early off-season. But I’m a patient fan (I mean, the last championship took 86 years), and I have an attention span long enough to, say, actually watch the whole playoffs to see who ultimately wins. I don’t need a celebration a week to keep me, you know, interested. But — no doubt these televised bashes are highly sanctioned by Bud Selig and his MLB braintrust (if anything with so small a capacity for analytical thought could be called that) — that’s not the way our spoon-feeding culture tends to work.

These pre-Big Dance celebrations seem just the sort of thing that would get your ass handed to you in the National Hockey League — where the only thing that matters is getting your mitts and name on the greatest trophy in all of sport. Back in ’97, then-captain of the Flyers, Eric Lindros wouldn’t even deign to touch the Wales Conference trophy presented to him and the Flyers as semi-final winners on their way to their first Cup finals in 10 years. It was a fascinatingly stubborn gesture, but the message was clear enough: we’re not finished our mission.

Unfortunately, the Big E and his mates never did get to drink from Lord Stanley’s mighty chalice (A pox upon you, Darren McCarty!), falling to the Red Wings in a four game sweep. But I have to think the lingering stink of week-old champagne soaked into skate leather would have made the collapse even more difficult to stomach.

So the dearly departed Cubbies, Phillies, Angels, Yankees, Diamondbacks, and Indians will always have the Paris of their too-eager clubhouse Festivus (or would that be “Festivi”?). And maybe some of them are satisfied with that. Maybe it’s outdated and naïve of me to think otherwise. When you make $10 mil a year or whatever, can you really be considered professionally unfulfilled for never winning The Big One? Maybe, maybe not. But I don’t make that kind of cheddar. I get judged at work on whether I succeed or not. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I do know this: no matter how often your team has celebrated to this point, you don’t get one of these for second place.